Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday July 04, 2009 @02:21AM
from the i-want-to-bunny-hop-in-elder-scrolls-v dept.

The Guardian has an article about id Software's status after being purchased by ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company) not long ago. While id gained considerable financial stability out of the deal, it's clear that what Bethesda has to gain is access to top-of-the-line engine technology, which they've often needed to license. id's Todd Hollenshead said, "The videogames business is defined by technology, which is why guys like JC [John Carmack] are still so significant. Consumers may not be as in touch with the intricacies as they used to be, but you can still make significant, impactful change. We're confident Rage will be one of them..." He also mentions that "the PC market has receded in terms of significance," a sentiment evidenced by id's aggressive expansion into the iPhone games market.

If the PC market has "receded in terms of significance" it is due solely to developers abandoning the platform. If developers like id or Valve (with their recent Left 4 Dead 2 fiasco) would remember the platform that made them what they are, then the platform itself would still be doing just fine, thank you very much.
PCs haven't changed. Developers have.

I think the quote "receded in terms of significance" means that because consoles don't have the illusion of piracy problems that PCs do, and consoles can also bring a lot of additional revenue streams that are not present with PCs (like DRM-ed downloadable content), it means that more bucks on average can be made from the console gamer than the PC gamer.

PCs are not going away anytime soon. In this economy, it becomes harder for someone to justify the cost of a console if they don't have one already, while

Someone who spends 300+ dollars for a console (which is nothing more than a propitiatory computer) are more likely to spend money on games for that platform and then turn around and buy the new platform in 2 years. They are already totally on board with the idea that they will have zero control and are willing to pay whatever you demand. People who play or did play computer games are much more likely to cause trouble and bitch.

While your story has some merit you leave out the part where a huge amount of PC games came out during the NES, SNES, XBOX, ETC days when it was much more likely to have a problem than today. The Xbox had a 733Mhz Intel Processor, You can't buy a new computer that slow anymore and even onboard graphic's or a 49 dollar video card will play most games perfectly fine in a decent rez.

I still think it has more to due with control than with hardware problems. As fa

A lot of folks back then essentially used their C64's, Atari's and Amigas as game consoles, and never used them for anything else, at least after the crash of '84. The C64 and Amiga were actually originally designed to be consoles, that were turned into computers later in their development. Nigh about 87 a lot of those people had shifted to the NES.

Developers want to make games for whichever platforms sell. With hardcore PC gamers only wanting to play MMOs or FPS sequels, and casual PC gamers only playing browser games, then developers will concentrate on consoles and handhelds.

I agree with you, but i wouldnt toss Valve into the mix. Valve has been great on the PC. Steam while it still is a copy protection scheme, is still a pretty dam good distribution platform and a great gaming community. Yes its a form of DRM but they're pretty fair with the users and Steam doesn't hassle the user in any way really. Its very light on resources and it enhances the gaming community.

Valve has also been incredible with Team Fortress 2. They've supported it quite well and Its far better than anythi

Rhetorical question: Why do you need keyboard shortcuts? Couldn't a game easily be designed to use a menu system entirely and not need them at all? Admittedly, such a game might be slower paced than other games, but it could be done.

Also, modern gamepads have a lot of buttons, that can be used in combination to provide such things as would be provided by keyboard shortcuts (that's how C&C worked on the PSone) For example, say you have to hit the Home key on your keyboard to center your view on your b

Rhetorical question: Why do you need keyboard shortcuts? Couldn't a game easily be designed to use a menu system entirely and not need them at all? Admittedly, such a game might be slower paced than other games, but it could be done.

Slow paced strategy games already exist. They're called turn based strategy [wikipedia.org]. Menu systems are simply too slow to use in an RTS, where reaction time is the only thing that can save you when an enemy has snuck past your defenses and is in your base killing your troops.

Also, modern gamepads have a lot of buttons, that can be used in combination to provide such things as would be provided by keyboard shortcuts (that's how C&C worked on the PSone) For example, say you have to hit the Home key on your keyboard to center your view on your base. You either have to bring your left hand over or take your hand off your mouse, while say on a Dual Shock style controller that could be as easy and as fast as say R2+L1.

One of the advantages of a keyboard is that you can have mnemonic shortcuts, such as A for attack, M for move, G for train grenadier, T for build tank and so on. Likewise, the ability to bind groups of units to numbers is extremely useful, and v

How do you play a FPS or a RTS (which account for most of the PC games) using a Wiimote?

Same way you play them with a mouse. Tense up, breath heavily, make swift twitching movements and press the left click/fire button eight times for every needed press. Then issue a stream of profanities, whether or not you're winning.

Wiimote is still significantly worse than using a mouse, mostly due to the difficulty of turning in shooters. And don't forget the keyboard. There are many types of games which have trouble fitting their functionality comfortably into just 8 buttons. Sometimes it's also handy to have a controller which can be used for writing without a virtual keyboard.

Sure, because games that rely on non-standard hardware do so very well (obvious exceptions, like Guitar Hero, notwithstanding).
Especially a keyboard.. You don't sit at your desk, on your office chair with its comfortable typing position. You sit on your couch, and type with your keyboard on your lap, a fair distance from your screen. Must be a hell of a game, to make you suffer through that much strain.

Especially a keyboard.. You don't sit at your desk, on your office chair with its comfortable typing position.

Actually I do. I have a PS3 with an office style setup on a desk sitting next to a 19" HDTV, the keyboard and mouse are on the pullout tray. I had/have a Linux install on my PS2/PS3 and have played both PS2 MMORPG's so a desktop style setup works really well. Helped with the PS2 keyboard+mouse supporting ports of Deus Ex and Half Life too. And if I'm just using the PS3's media features, or shoppi

The keyboard and mouse combo is still very far from being surpassed. The problem is that 99% of games these days are cross-platform, and as such the control scheme is designed for the lowest common denominator (consoles), and thus doesn't make use of the possibilities offered by keyboard+mouse.

The problem is the games, there is no reason you couldn't connect a keyboard and mouse to the usb ports present on all modern consoles, games just need to be written to support them... And if the game is multi platform, it would presumably already have that support had they bothered to enable it for the console builds.

You can get more powerful hardware in a PC, but...Many people don't have cutting edge hardware, many people i know use hardware less powerful than an xbox360 or ps3. Because of this games cann

The problem is that 99% of games these days are cross-platform, and as such the control scheme is designed for the lowest common denominator (consoles), and thus doesn't make use of the possibilities offered by keyboard+mouse.

If you have one PC and one 32" monitor but four people, you need to drop to the lowest common denominator because Windows happens not to support four keyboards or four mice through a USB hub very well.

Another advantage the PC has is much more powerful hardware.

A lot of PCs come with Intel GMA; I still haven't been able to get a straight answer as to whether or not a typical PC with an Intel GMA 950 is more powerful than a Wii.

Console makers are shooting themselves in the foot... All the modern consoles come with USB ports, and most modern keyboards and mice are USB... There is nothing to stop someone connecting a keyboard/mouse to a console and using it to play games...As for modding, games would just need to be designed for that purpose, consoles come with hard drives, usb and memory card slots these days so it wouldn't be hard to have them look there for data files.Not sure what to say about small independent games, the consol

There is nothing to stop someone connecting a keyboard/mouse to a console and using it to play games...

Other than that players 2 through 4 would be at a disadvantage.

As for modding, games would just need to be designed for that purpose, consoles come with hard drives, usb and memory card slots these days so it wouldn't be hard to have them look there for data files.

The console makers want to restrict moddability. Little Big Planet is one thing, but Nintendo doesn't want modders turning Metroid Prime into Metroid Kart for fear of it cutting into the sales of Mario Kart.

This is a scapegoat I'm sorry, many games were released during the age of broadband and the internet and were easily downloadable then (pre 2000, 1998/1997). Warez scene has been around since ye old shareware days and before that. Copies of Dos / Win 3.1 were shared rampantly via sneakernet.

What really happened is this:

Game graphics tech got more and more complex with the advent of 3D acelleration, which upped development costs for c

Descent 3 and Freespace 1 + 2, part of the reason they bombed was because a large segment of Descent and other game players did not have 3D acceleration or could not afford it. This was lost on a lot of PC game developers and they ended up folding or going consoles (volition of freespace and freespace 2 fame comes to mind).

Nah, those games just sucked in a major way. Descent was interesting for 5 minutes what with the full 3D and so on, but ugly as sin and quite repetitive. Freespace tried to be Elite with a terrible story --- and that mix just wasn't very fun.

Besides, I do believe XBox360 and win32 uses the same freaking interface for 3D (directX), so 3D accel isn't even a distinguishing factor.

Nah, for my money, it is lack of sales that is killing the PC platform --- possibly due to rampant copying.

"Nah, for my money, it is lack of sales that is killing the PC platform --- possibly due to rampant copying."

This ignores games that have sold into the millions of copies, they were easily piratable as well.

-Supreme commander-Crysis-The Witcher-Guid wars (5 million copies)

All games which sold more then a million on PC, in an age of bit-torrent and piracy as the piracy bleeters keep saying. The sales are there so you're argument is bullshit. The truth is game developers are clueless and just want to fall b

This is a scapegoat I'm sorry, many games were released during the age of broadband and the internet and were easily downloadable then (pre 2000, 1998/1997). Warez scene has been around since ye old shareware days and before that. Copies of Dos / Win 3.1 were shared rampantly via sneakernet.

Of course there has always been a ton of piracy, but the major change in recent years is that one can easily download warez without being a member of a "scene". Also, since its occurring in the open, publishers are more aware of it.

I tend to agree with you about the demands of 3D accelleration, but the other major change is the consumer PC market shifting to laptops starting in the early 2000s. In the glory days of PC gaming, a video card upgrade was simple and cheap, now it's basically impossible for most

"Of course there has always been a ton of piracy, but the major change in recent years is that one can easily download warez without being a member of a "scene"."

I'm going to call BS on that one, games were simple to copy back then and you could always find a nerdy friend to hook you up with a copy. Civ 1 for instance had no copy protection, and I remember getting a copy of it from my cousins, you forget back in ye old days, DRM was not as widespread. Shareware were how Duke 3D and Doom were distributed,

When I was a kid, I pirated hundreds of computer games from friends, so I'm certainly not arguing that sort of thing has always happened. (That sort of thing is exactly what I mean by a "scene".) However, as an adult, I don't have anyone I can call up and say "yo, hook me up with the warez". But I could PirateBay pretty much anything I wanted to.

Just as an example, some years ago I downloaded UT99. It came bundled as 50 1.4MB RAR files on a hacked FTP server downloading at like 1k/sec. Now I could saturate

"When I was a kid, I pirated hundreds of computer games from friends, so I'm certainly not arguing that sort of thing has always happened. (That sort of thing is exactly what I mean by a "scene".) However, as an adult, I don't have anyone I can call up and say "yo, hook me up with the warez". But I could PirateBay pretty much anything I wanted to."

You're missing the point entirely, PC games STILL SELL WELL if they are good, when starcraft 2 and diablo 3 hits you don't think the aren't going to sell DESPITE

Ha, apparently you believe this is only some sort of abstract intellectual debate. Please. None of our internet blathering matters one bit to the capital investors that I'm supposedly "protecting".

In the real world PC games have a poor ROI, and publishers have identified piracy as part of the reason for that. You can get angry and stomp your feet about it, but that's not going to make any more games available to you in reality.

Any advantage the mouse/keyboard combo gave the PC (which was substantial) is shrinking; it nearly went away with the wiimote

WTF are you on? the wiimote sucks for anything other than sports/minigames,MMORPG - forget having a complex worlds with different spells at your fingertips with just a few buttonsRTS - seriously no chance of playing anything but a simplified RTS with just a few buttonsFPS - you need an aimable area much bigger than that of a tv screenshooters - timecrises/zombie flick/etc well these kind of work, but you never actually point to shoot, you move the crosshair about (but fundamentaly these DO work on the wii)

The other advantages of PC games are ofc:easy mods:- counter-strike, day of defeat, gary's modbetter graphics - The id5tech engine will have to trade off fps for graphics quality on rage, on pc you get to set this yourself because high-end pcs can alreadybetter bang for buck for hardware - Ok some specs are better on game systems when they are first released, but given that pcs can be upgraded and generally come with more than 512MB ram, if you spend $400 upgrading you system every 3/4 years (probably more often if you bought an xbox) you system would be far more powerful than any current gen system.Free(ish) multiplayer gaming for most genres.Better communities / multiplayer architecture for most genres - having dedicated servers, forums and admins, produces a much better gaming experience than xbox/wii/ps3-live ever can

All consoles really have is:noob friendly (is that really a plus)local multiplayer

MMORPG - forget having a complex worlds with different spells at your fingertips with just a few buttons

Do you really need access to all your spells all the time? Are there not spells you rarely use? Couldn't an interface be designed to take that into account? Yes, yes it could and has been done...twice. I've played both console MMORPG's: Final Fantasy XI and Everquest Online Adventures. Though you need a keyboard for communicating, you don't really need it to control the game, because the games UI has

You'll have to define "few" because modern consoles have a lot of buttons, that can be used in combination as well.Some do, the wiimote certainly doesn't though. When used in the wiimote/nunchuck configuration there is an analog stick (which is not clickable) and two buttons on the nunchuck and a dpad and two usable buttons on the wiimote.

Perhaps with microphones for communication and a good design an MMO doesn't need more than 10 buttons, I've just been playing an fps and that alone used 12 keys regularly without spells or any of that jaz. MMOs arn't my thing but given that there are much fewer console MMOs, id guess that most MMOs don't work well with just 10 buttons (12 button controller -left/right click). OFC there may be many other reasons tbh i don't know.

You'll have to define "few" because modern consoles have a lot of buttons

Few is 10 (although i was originally posting in reply to somebody talking about

Actually, they both cost more. The older machine, bought in 2003 was 3x the price of the PS2 (bought in 2001), The more recent machine was less expensive, but still a bit more expensive than the Ps3

Pc gaming is also cheaper (I have spent less on my entire gaming "carer" and I used to be seriously hooked (tournaments and everything), than my brother has just on the consoles hes bought(ps,ps2+xbox,xbox360+wii)).

1. The cost. I grew up on consoles, simply because a decent gaming PC was a lot more expensive and we didn't have as much money to spare. Plus, they can't keep up with the top-of-the-line level games for long, so you have to upgrade, costing more money... The consoles are a bit pricier these days and computers are more ubiquitous, so NOW the situation is a bit different, but even now that I have a good PC that I can run games on, I still find myself

The ps3 is the only console to not be cracked yet (AFAIK). Piracy is rampant on the wii/DS/psp the only thing prevents piracy on the xbox360 is that you can't do online gaming but the same is true of most pc games. The only reason ps1 was so popular was because everybody had theirs chipped.

For reference, the engine is called id Tech 5, and it is being used for a game called Rage, amongst other things. The RAGE Engine is Rockstar's engine, which was used for GTA4, Midnight Club LA, and for the upcoming Max Payne sequel. Not replying to you specifically so much as all the people I've seen referring to id's "Rage Engine". It's going to get confusing...

While its true that PC gaming is sharing a larger and larger chunk of its gaming dollars with consoles, there is still money to be made on PCs IMO. For people like me I'll take mouse/keyboard over a console controller any day for FPS games. Perhaps id would make more money if their more recent PC games were actually good. Given their new found financial resources I hope id takes the time and creates something other than Doom X with shiny id Tech Y. Try adding some new, innovative game play in your next game and perhaps I might buy it.

True. And the great games within the genre weren't all that innovative; Half-Life and Half-Life 2 didn't "innovate" much on Doom/Quake, they improved on it with excellent level design and a mysterious setting, giving a sense of playing through a varied story instead of the repetitive "find the key card and shoot up yet more monsters" mechanics of other FPS games. The levels work more like tracks on a roller coaster than actual levels, which limits the freedom of the player but at the same time allows the de

It would seem from a number of ways of looking at it, that the PC is as large a market as any given console. It is the "4th console" as it were. As such that means the market is not at all insignificant. Part of the problem I think is that some publishers view it as "PC vs Console" where all consoles are unified in to one market, and the PC in a separate one. They then think that the PC market should be as big as the console market and bemoan that it isn't. That's just not a good way to look at it.

Also some developers at least are showing a renewed interest in the PC. Capcom, for example, decided to bring Street Fighter 4 to the PC. It comes out next Tuesday. They had done some of the SF games on PC, but stopped after Alpha 2. However now they are trying again. Part of it may be because the Arcade version of the game is a Windows PC (it runs on Taito X2 hardware which is an XP embedded PC) but they also must see the PC market as worth the port, as they've already one Xbox 360 and PS3 ports.

I do think you are on to something with the quality of iD's games. I have been very unimpressed. Quake 4 in particular was a real disappointment. However not only have their games disappointed me, but their engine has as well. That was traditionally their big thing. Their engine was the cutting edge.

Well when Doom 3 came out, showing off iDTech 4, I was real underwhelmed. The "all real world light sources" were neat, but poorly done. Shadows were very dark and very harsh, owing to the fact light only bounced once in the engine. What's more, texture detail was substantially below what I was used to. Personally, I felt UT2004 (Unreal Engine 2) looked better over all. Not as many advanced features, but the graphics were more pleasing. Also Doom needed a beast of a system to do what it did, whereas UT2004 ran very well on moderate hardware.

Also iDtech 4 hasn't advanced much at this point. It is still their top flight engine and Unreal Engine 3 totally blows it away. Thus far, they've had no good response.

You can see it in the sales too. Currently there's 7 games that use iDTech 4, and over half of those are iD or Raven (who works closely with iD) games. UE3, which has been out for much less time, has near 100 games using it, including non-FPS games (such as the Last Remnant, an RPG).

It seems like iD isn't making first flight engines, which would be ok if their games were great, but their games are also rather undifferentiated. That is not a good situation to be in. A mediocre game with amazing graphics can still sell well, and of course the engine can be licensed out for all kinds of stuff (maybe the game is just a tech demo more than anything). Likewise a great game can get by just fine with mediocre graphics. However being not so god at both isn't a real recipe for success, especially not if you are spending the money developing your own engine.

We'll see what happens. I hope iD Tech 5 is awesome, but I worry. There really hasn't been anything out of them in terms of news or demos or the like since 2007. That is not a good sign to me. A lot changes in computers in 3 years, you'd think we'd see at least some more news about the status or demos or something. Any time a project is announced and then falls silent for a number of years, I worry that there are problems and it isn't going to be what it should.

I think one of the main reasons that the Unreal engine really took off is that it comes with UnrealEd.

With ID's engine, you were shopping around for some 3rd party editor and then importing the data, while with Unreal you STILL had the option of importing from 3rd party editors and could do some final tweaking (or working from scratch) while running under the very engine you are targeting in realtime.

Now another thing about consoles. Try playing a realistic flight or space sim on them. You'll run out of buttons real quick. Consoles are USELESS when it comes to realistic sims. Especially something like IL2 Sturmovik.

Consoles are neat but with the limited controllers and little room for expansion when it comes to things like flightsticks and rudder pedals and such they just don't interest me much.

Plug 3 video cards into a console.... can't do that either. Multihead gaming.... also cool for

Now another thing about consoles. Try playing a realistic flight or space sim on them. You'll run out of buttons real quick. Consoles are USELESS when it comes to realistic sims. Especially something like IL2 Sturmovik.

Of course they're useless for that, because no one's ever done a Falcon/Jane's/bearded sim grognard with a full cockpit setup type games for them. Doesn't mean they couldn't be done though. In fact, a version of IL2 is going to be released for the PS3, Xbox 360, DS and PSP with two modes, a

let you have multiple input devices like rudder pedals and a joystick.

We know multiple input devices can be done, so it's up to the developers to put that support in, it's not impossible. I also know that the Xbox 360's Hori Flight stick (for use with Ace Combat) has rudder controls on the throttle. That stick itself is a clone of the Saitek X-45.

Try setting up head tracking and stereoscopic video on that IL2 port for the XBOX 360 for example.

With the recent closing of the doors to 3d Realms it's good to reflect on the old heavy hitters in a contemporary complexion.

Back in the day it was the Unreal Engine and the Quake engine that were the benchmark for graphics. The build engine for 3d realms spawned countless titles, though that was the last great engine they had.

So today, it seems that what is most important to some firms is the quality of the engine rather than the games they produce. This however results in titles that are simply showcases, appose to good games.

It would be nice for developers to have enough in house resources to do both. Create an amazing game around an amazing engine.

With that I look with optimism to the future of id in hopes that they bring back some of that old sparkle that has been lacking as of late.

I always thought Id's games were perfect examples of engine showcases. I remember being very fascinated with Quake; read all about it, BSP modeling etc. (I even tried to create my own 3d-engine, which failed miserable, by the way).

Anyone else remember Ramblings in Real-time [bluesnews.com] by Mike Abrash? Worth a read if you're interested in the mechanics of the Quake 3D-engine.

But Quake still wasn't very much more than showcasing... Id often seemed to rely on parties such as Raven Software for convincing storylines, exciting level designs, etc. I'd like to see them produce a game like Oblivion... A cutting edge 3d engine to power a convincing RPG world, what more would you want!

To this day I am amazed at just how many games the Quake 3 engine ended up powering. When I first saw Q3, I was pretty amazed by it, but I never thought it had what it took to power "full" games. Call of Duty just blew me away, and even more so when I found out it was the Q3 engine.

I'm kind of disappointed they didn't see that level of success with the Doom 3 engine. There was plenty of potential, but nobody seems to have chased up on it.

I'm kind of disappointed they didn't see that level of success with the Doom 3 engine. There was plenty of potential, but nobody seems to have chased up on it.

id Tech 4 had some issues. [wikipedia.org] The per-pixel lighting made it quite resource-hungry, and it's only useful for "spooky" games. And, at first, it couldn't handle wide open areas well. So most developers thought it was wiser to go with the Unreal Engine 2.

Note that Abrash defected from I.D. (Quake) and went to work for Microsoft (XBOX), then defected from Microsoft and went to work for RAD (Pixomatic) whos technology is found in.. you guessed it.. the Unreal engine.

I recently heard that he was now working for Intel (Larabbee) but can't find anything official-sounding to back that up.

While Quake was a pretty unexciting game, it was an excellent tech demo. I struggled through the first chapter (against boredom, not against the game) and couldn't be bothered with the other three. Making the QuakeC compiler free, however, was a stroke of genius. The game was in three parts, the progs.dat file, containing a bytecode-compiled version of the game logic, the engine binary that loaded and ran the bytecode, and the artwork / models / levels.

And only now do I find out that Id has actually been acquired by Zenimax, which owns Bethesda as well. According to this interview [1up.com] with John Carmack, Doom 4 will actually be a Bethesda title.

So I guess we might as well expect a Doom-4-engine-powered Oblivion II. Exciting!

I wonder if this means they wont GPL any further game engines... This news was kinda sad, one of the top tier developers sells out... a sad time for pc gamers... but I guess it could have been worse, EA could have bought them.

Carmack said in a press release recently that their feelings towards open source are not negotiable (paraphrasing) and that every tech engine they make is intended for eventual open sourcing. Its simply part of the entire design philosophy

HE owned a big part of Id, but unless it's in the buyout contract I wouldn't be so certain it will happen. Management can change it's mind at any time. It probably won't for the next engine to be opened, because they want to keep Carmack happy. But I'd be surprised (pleasantly so) if it actually continues long term.

That's exactly what I meant to say. He wouldn't sign up for a contract stopping him from carrying out at least a large part of his vision for the company. Everything I've read from him indicates this and so do the things I've read about him.

He seems happy to work with them for now, indicating he likely got pretty much what he wanted. There are really no arguments against open-sourcing deprecated code. Things like that are great for PR, great for training programmers, great for keeping the games alive, etc

Why is John Carmack the only developer of commercial game engines who actually releases the source code after they have become technically obsolete? I mean it's very nice, since it's given us games like Urban Terror and OpenAreana which can be released completely free as standalone games, but companies very rarely do things out of the goodness of their hearts.

The only reason I can see him doing this is because he believes in the open-source cause, but will his new owner allow him to continue this trend?

Releasing the source works out extremely beneficial for them... By the time a game gets opened up, it has very little value as a commercial game anymore, but look at any modern platform that has been cracked or released open - a port of quake or doom is one of the first things to spring up. So something that has virtually no commercial value now becomes a free advertising platform and keeps your name prominent.Most games from the same era as quake are languishing as abandonware and occasionally being played under dosbox, quake runs natively on virtually anything these days.It's also only the engine that's open, the data files are not, so you can either use third party data files (like urban terror and openarena), the original demo files or buy the original data files (you will usually be able to find a dirt cheap copy of the game in a bargain bin somewhere).

I think all game companies should do this, having the source to old games is good for everyone involved and far better than games becoming abandonware that won't even run on modern systems without some form of emulation.

I'm a bit surprised that updated versions of the old engines don't take an business from him. Something like the DarkPlaces engine, based on the Quake 1 engine, is not up to the same standards as top-of-the-line commercial engines today, but it still looks good and is free. If the selling point for your game is how fun it is to play, then using an engine like this is much cheaper than licensing a commercial one. If the selling point is how good it looks, then you need to be writing your own engine or you

There's probably a variety of reasons, but some of them are:1. Licensing/Ownership issues. Over the course of the 5+ years it takes an engine to become obsolete, a lot of game developers don't exist anymore, have been bought out, merged, changed management, changed publishers, etc. Between commitments to publishers, distributors, creditors, licensors and such, even if they do still exist, it may no longer be clear if they even legally can release the source, and doing so may open them up to legal trouble

I think it was Seymour Cray [wikipedia.org] who made a boat every year and finished by chopping the boat up and having a barbecue. If I could somehow dispose of the megabytes of legacy code I have to deal with at work, moving forward would be a lot easier. So maybe GPLing code is Carmack's way of saying its done. Now forget about it and move on.

In one of their earlier games (Doom, iirc), they did license some sound library (or something). Guess it was so annoying getting rid of that library when they open sourced that engine later on, they just gave up on using (commercial) third party libraries altogether..
Though I didn't know you could even make iPhone games without using Apples' libraries, which, afaik, are not free.

I do remember the first game that went from water was a blue surface w/static animations to water being a T&L surface with actual waves where you can go splashing in the water and it was just like WOW. People don't like limitations that just seem arbitrary compared to the real world, if it's a 3D world you're simulating why can't you see it in 3D? Why can you only move in n fixed directions when in real world you can go in what

I do remember the first game that went from water was a blue surface w/static animations to water being a T&L surface with actual waves where you can go splashing in the water and it was just like WOW.

What game was it for you? It was Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance for me. I think I spent a minute or two just walking around in it when I first ran into that water early in the game.

A successfully adopted engine is their only truly viable option considering the not exactly stellar performance and reception of games like Doom 3, Quake 4, and Quake Wars. They need to focus on something. One thing. Regroup. Then come out swinging with that one haymaker rather than increasing the number of projects they're on and diluting their brands with titles that no longer rock the gaming world.

It isn't like they are lacking in fan-base or good-will, if they make such strides.

Also, there is no way they're going to stick with the name "Rage". I believe they learned once before that you need to use your engine as a marketing tool by tying it to your identity as a business and not calling it something obscure.

You mean by calling it something like... I dunno, "id Tech 5 [wikipedia.org]"?

"Since 1996, id powered games have generated worldwide revenues in excess of $2 Billion. id's most recent internally developed title, DOOM 3ï½, extends a proven track record with over 3.5 million units sold and is id's most successful game to date." http://www.shacknews.com/docs/press/010710_id_carmack_emmys.x [shacknews.com]

They also did focus on one thing at a time until more recently. Raven made Quake 4, Splash Damage made ET:QW, then id fixed Qua

I wonder how many Doom 3 sales were driven by mods. Quake 1 looked good and was quite fun in multiplayer, but the single-player game sucked. The mods, however (especially things like Team Fortress), really sold it. Half Life was similar; fairly good single player, okay multiplayer, but mods like Counter Strike were the reason most people I knew bought it.

Id was at its best when Jon Romero worked there since Carmack would focus on the graphics and Romero would focus on the gameplay. Since the break-up of this partnership Id's games have gone drastically down hill while Romero found he couldn't make a game without Carmack. Romero appeared to have trouble with the technical side of Daikatana with lengthy delays and terrible visuals when it finally was released. Daikatana received a poor reception but the gameplay was clearly there with some innovative ideas and great feel to the movement control. It was the technical execution that was lacking, likely a result of not having somebody like Carmack.

Carmack's engines always look amazing but the engine is now Id's only selling point and their games are just dire. Id desperately needs to recruit someone with a proven record of making fun games so they can bring their gamplay up to the level of their engines. I vote for Romero, and bring American McGee back while you're at it. That would really return Id back to its past glory.

I agree it does sound like a good idea. i.e. The whole bit about having the flashlight and being able to shoot mutually exclusive in Doom 3 just wasn't a very good design decision.

Unfortunately, that's not to happen. I had dinner with Romero at E3 - he's busy doing 5 (!) MMOs. I actually asked about Daikatana.:-) I didn't realize it sold 200,000 and broke even for Eidos. He admitted that one of the mistakes made was hiring inexperienced people. One of the lesson learnt was "Hire the most experienced people first, the least experienced people last" which sounds pretty reasonable.

Hopefully Bethesda will use the quake or doom engine in their new games. I never liked the feel of the controls in Oblivion or Fallout 3. The movement just felt weird compared to say, ETQW or other id titles. Like the controls were a little too loose or something.

Videogames business is defined by technology? Not true anymore, it's pretty much all about the content. Everyone is at the moment accustomed to great graphics so that argument just don't cut anymore. That's why games like GTA and Fallout 3 are top sellers. People just won't buy "gfx demos" like Doom3 anymore, because they can easily check the word about the game from 'net, or from Steam directly.

You could also look at Warsow built on a dervivative of the Quake 2 engine. I think the pro mode portion of the Q3 CPMA mod may eventually be a stand alone product as well. Both are still deathmatch games(cpm is pretty much THE dm game), unlike urban terror.